For
the first time there was a clash of the poets chosen by two readers,
which indicates we need to pre-announce the choice. Perhaps, this will
extend to the readings chosen within a novel too. Joe will work on a
method to do that coordination online.

Mathew, Sunil, Gopa

Our
loyal reader, Thommo, is on a tour of India in a Tata Nano (the
world's best car for the buck). We are all following his progress.
Currently he is in Gangtok, driving on his way to the lovely Seven Sister states in the
North-East. Check out: http://manoetnano.com/

Priya

Since
this is the two-hundredth year of Robert Browning's birth, the
readers decided to celebrate it with an exclusive session that will
feature Robert Browning, on Sep 14. At the top right of this page are
the future programmes.

Kavita, Priya, Talitha, KumKum, Gopa, Mathew, Sunil, Joe

Read
on for a Ghalib exercise after scanning the full account below
...

The
fiction novel selected by Mathew and Sunil for reading is Three
Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome. The
next fiction book for reading will be selected by Talitha
& Zakia. Here
are future dates:

Jun
14A Tale of Two
Cities
by Charles Dickens (note Thursday,
not Friday)

Jul
13
PoetryAug
10Three Men in a
Boat,
by Jerome K. JeromeSep
14
Poetry of Robert Browning

Since
Sunil and Mathew will have Lodge meetings on the third Friday of the
month we'll try to stay clear of that.

Since
May 7 this year marked 200 years since Robert Browning's birth, the
readers decided to dedicate a whole session to his poetry on Sep 14.

KumKum
– Akhmatova

Anna
Andreyevna Akhmatova (1889 - 1966)

This
is the second time KumKum was choosing to read from Akhmatova. Her
oeuvre is large and varied; she was a truly gifted poet. She had a
distinct stature among the other major poets of Russia in the
twentieth century; namely, Osip Mandelstam (whom Joe selected two
years ago), Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Nikolai Gumilyov,
Vladimir Shileiko and Nikolai Punin, etc. Incidentally, the last
three men became her husband (serially, mind, not at once; there was
laughter among the readers when KumKum left out the 'serially' bit).

Akhmatova's influence was acknowledged by all the poets of her time.
She possessed stately good looks, grace and she was, intellectually
equal to the brightest among them. One senses subtle feminine traits
in her poems in spite of that.

In
1912 Akhmatova gave birth to her only son Lev Gumilyov; but
motherhood almost passed by her, as the child was brought up by her
mother-in-law. She once wrote : “motherhood is a bright torture. I
was not worthy of it.”

All
her life Akhmatova remained an elusive diva at the centre of a throng
of admirers. She had a few serious relationships, but she could not
be held down by marriage. One senses this free spiritedness in many
of her beautiful love poems. They are not overtly sentimental, for
they provide only glimmers of her intimate life, here and there. She
had a perspicuous style, easy to read. Her 'nationalist' poems are
powerful in depicting the suffering of war, but optimistic in their
yearning for better times to come. She is at her most personal when
writing about nature, always alert to capture its transient beauty.

Akhmatova
blossomed during the time of the Russian Revolution. She and all her
intellectual compatriots got drawn into it as believers. However,
because they also believed in the freedom to express the truth, they
were subject to banishment across the Urals, imprisonment, and even
death (Osip Mandelshtam,and Lev Gumilyov, her own husband). It was a
very unsettling time. There was a period between 1925 and 1940 when
her poems were banned from publication. But, such was her immense
following, that they remained in circulation by word of mouth. Later,
all these poems committed to memory were gathered and published as
fragments, poems without titles.

Her
poems dealt with the usual things poets connect to: love, and nature
most of all. But she also wrote many poems for her friends, nearly
all of whom were literary types, poets mostly. Joe asked if she too
was forced to write encomiums about Stalin. No, she didn't, replied
KumKum and that was the reason she was forbidden publication for
fifteen years, and reduced to silence, though she continued reciting
among close groups. KumKum has long possessed the big volume of 700
pages of her poems translated by Judith Hemschemeyer; she loves
dipping into it from time to time.

The
question arose who was the 'N.V.N.' of the third poem chosen. It was
certainly not one of her husbands. Joe later tracked it down as the
name of one of Akhmatova's close friends, the critic and poet,
Nikolay
Vladimirovich Nedobrovo.
The poem reminded KumKum of Demi Moore the actor taking up with a
young man, a comment that had the readers in titters; but from the
book referred to below the poem, it is clear NVN was not a lover,
though indeed they had a close friendship. Her allure as a woman
coupled with her stature as a popular poet, made her quite a dame
among her literary admirers; Pasternak, also a poet, though he made
his reputation as a novelist, wanted to marry her when he was already
hitched. But then Pasternak had other women whom he loved, Olga
Ivinskaya in particular.

At
this point KumKum mentioned it was Robert Browning's 200th birth
anniversary, and Priya suggested we have a whole session on him. This
was readily agreed and now's the problem of coordinating so we all
read different poems of his. Joe recalled Rabbi
Ben Ezra and My
Last Duchess were chosen by Thommo
and Indira on previous occasions.

Kavita
– Wordsworth

William
Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)

When Kavita
announced she was going to read Wordsworth in her inaugural session,
Joe asked if it was The Daffodils. Yes, she said, and then
KumKum remarked in jest she had a friend who expressed a willingness
to recite this poem, when he, if ever, was asked to join us – it's
Nainan, the husband of our Talitha! He promised at our lunch on Feb
12, “I'll come, I'll come, I'll recite The Daffodils.”
Such poems remain the residue of schooling in India, a time in life
when we read poems, not for pleasure, but for their being on the
prescribed syllabus, generally some venerable oldies like The
Daffodils.

KumKum recalled
that when our readings were once reported in the Manorama
newspaper (we used to meet in Bobby's JustFiction bookstore) a young
girl came, accompanied by her parents, and recited The Daffodils,
holding a bouquet of not-quite-daffodils in her hand. It was
touching, the girl's enthusiasm to recite and the parents keenness to
thrust forward their girl.

Talitha remarked
these daffodils of Wordworth's are not just a few standing in a
garden hedgerow, but a whole sea of them:

They stretched
in never-ending line

Along the
margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their
heads in sprightly dance.

She
referred to her experience of seeing vast fields of bluebells and
daffodils. KumKum from her gardening knowledge in America said the
chipmunks there propagate daffodils by burying their bulbs all over
the place. Wordsworth may have been in the Lake District observing
fields of them growing on the hill-side next to a bay of the sea. You
can check out the following to note that it was a diary entry by his
sister, Dorothy, that actually triggered the poem:

Dove
Cottage Grasmere, where Wordsworth wrote this wonderful poem ....

Daffodils
are a sign of hope that the winter is over and summer is coming. ...
Daffodils was composed in 1804, two years after Wordsworth saw the
flowers while walking by Ullswater on a stormy day with Dorothy, his
sister. Wordsworth's inspiration for the poem came from an account of
the daffodils on Ullswater written by Dorothy.

Dorothy
Wordsworth in her journal entry for 15 April 1802 , describes the
daffodils:'I never saw
daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and
about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow
for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as
if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the
lake, they looked so gay ever dancing ever changing.'

Daffodils
have become the symbol of the Lake District. In spring daffodils are
found everywhere.

The
four stanzas are in iambic tetrameter rhyming ABABCC.

Kavita
picked another high-school fav, The
Solitary Reaper.
It has a haunting quality:

Perhaps the
plaintive numbers flow

For
old, unhappy, far-off things,

Gopa
has lived in the Lake District and she mentioned the cuckoos calling.
Kumkum wondered if they really are our koels. No, it's another bird,
quite common in Europe, with its famous cuckoo clocks. Mathew
mentioned the cuckoo spotting efforts of people in England as the
precursor to spring. They would write letters to The
Times
of London, and these letters have been collected in an amusing book
titled, The
First Cuckoo: New Selection of Letters to "The Times":
see http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-First-Cuckoo-Selection-Letters/dp/0048080403

But
Gopa said she had never heard cuckoos calling in London. Someone
suggested it may have been the accent – and there broke out the
kind of laughter that makes these exchanges of trivia so entertaining
to the readers.

Sunil
noted that sparrows are vanishing in Fort Kochi, thanks to the
aggression of the crows. KumKum can vouch for this with her sad story
about two kites nesting on a coconut palm opposite our house. They
were distracted out of their wits from their nest by a murder of
crows, then two of their number dived into the nest and carried off
the eggs. Barn owls can't see in the daytime, and if they are
disturbed from their secret hiding place during daylight, they are
immediately set upon by crows and the end is short and bloody. No
parliament of owls exists to rescue them. Crows prey on kittens and
pups too. But the magpie robins are thriving.

Gopa
– Bhatt

Sujata Bhatt

This poem was read previously by Amita when
she was in Kochi. The poet is of Gujarati extraction but has lived in
UK and USA. She was in America studying English, and feared she was
being ‘Americanised’ and losing her Indian identity. She was
convinced she'd forgotten her mother tongue. Then she dreamt of the
tongue growing back again, in the image of the poem. She manages by
exerting herself to excavate the Gujarati language back to her
consciousness.

A
number of our readers being bilingual or multi-lingual volunteered their
own encounters with language.

Gopa
married to a Malayali who knows little of her language (Bengali)
feels inadequate when speaking in Malyalam, though she gets along
okay in the bazaar. They decided the lingua franca of their
marriage would be English. When she is in Bombay she finds herself
slipping an occasional Malayalam word ('ippol' or 'eviday') into her Marathi speech. One morning she woke up and unconsciously
asked her husband, 'kota baje' (what time is it?) and he was taken
aback; it was the first time he had been addressed in Bengali.
Another out-of-state lady kept her expert knowledge of Malayalam
under wraps in the bazaar, but one day when the merchant was speaking
disparagingly she came out with such an erudite observation in
Malayalam, that she has become well-known since then. Joe vouched that KumKum
did not want him writing letters in Bengali, as he attempted for a while,
because she felt his mental acuity was lowered to accommodate his
sparse vocabulary in the language. Talitha had an itinerant all-India
upbringing in her youth, and although she knows Malayalam well-enough,
she feels unsure of it in the literary form.

Sujata
Bhatt has four collections of poetry to her name. She graduated with
an MFA from the University of Iowa.

[What
is MFA? Master of Fine Arts, said Joe, but there was some doubt as
English does not belong to the fine arts. However, the degree is
given in liberal arts subjects too if the student demonstrates
competence and is adjudged on the practice of the subject,
rather than on academic knowledge; in the latter case the
degree awarded is the usual MA. You can check this out in a long
interview she did with Carcanet Press, her publisher:

The
poem has been selected for the GCSE syllabus in UK. In 1994 Search for My Tongue
was choreographed by Daksha Sheth and performed by the UK-based
South Asian Dance Youth Company in nine cities in England and
Scotland, under the title 'Tongues Untied'. See

One of Das's poems
about multiple languages is more expressive and passionate than
Sujata Bhatt's on the same subject:

I am Indian,
very brown, born in

Malabar, I
speak three languages, write in

Two, dream in
one. Don't write in English, they said,

English is not
your mother-tongue. Why not leave

me alone,
critics, friends, visiting cousins,

Every one of
you? Why not let me speak in

Any language I
like? The language I speak.

Becomes mine,
its distortions, its queernesses

All mine, mine
alone...

She ends:

I have no joys
that are not yours, no

Aches which are
not yours. I too call myself I.

Satchidanandan
finds something wonderful in persons who are labeled 'mad'. In the
poem, The
Mad, he
expands on their innocence and their extravagant gestures and
associates them with actions on a grand scale. KumKum noted that we
heard him read this poem at the Hay Festival in Nov 2011 in
Thiruvananthapuram.

Sunil said for a
while Fort Kochi was a dump-yard for old men wandering the streets.
No more. Is it because they have been taken in by charitable
organisations like Good Hope on KJ Herschel Road, asked KumKum? Joe
recalled an incident in recent times when he prodded a down-and-out
person who was asleep by the roadside, intending to inquire about
him. But the bloke woke up with a threatening growl, and Joe left him
alone. He was not drunk, that's certain, for Joe can make out the
smell of liquor from ten metres.

Satchidanandan has
translated his own poems into English, showing that Indians have few
problems transiting between languages. But to do so expertly is still
a problem. Even Kamala Das compartmentalised her Malayalam and
English between short stories and poetry respectively. Talitha
mentioned she has problems in Malayalam grammar though she is using
it more and more. Gopa's in-laws may forgive her lack of fluency, but
this is not Talitha's case, since she is a Malyalee by birth. Kavita
mentioned that her in-laws would laugh at her Malayalam. Blessed are
those who are not put out by mere scorn, from adopting whatever
language they choose! Joe averred that spouses do not encourage the
language of the other, if it's different from their own – that's
his experience.

Satchidanandan has
also translated many foreign poets into Malayalam. He is the second
poet from Kerala to be nominated for the Nobel Prize (Kamala Das was
the first).

When
Sunil read these lines from the second poem, Stammer,

Did stammer
precede language

or succeed it?

Is it only a
dialect

or a language
itself? – these questions

make the
linguists stammer.

there arose a wave
of sniggers among the readers. Linguists being tongue-tied is a nice
image of a deserved comeuppance.

Stammer
brought Sunil memories of the recent movie, The
King's Speech.
Unusual techniques were used to help GeorgeVI overcome his stammer
(using cuss words with abandon). It had amazing results. The case of
Siddharth Goswami, a local tea-taster, was given; he has a noticeable
stammer in ordinary speech, but let him only start singing and all
stops vanish. Oliver Sacks, the famous neurologist, notes that music
has a calming effect on many a disturbed mind, for example on
autistic people. See

Talitha
conducts interviews for students, and in her experience when she
commands the student that he shall not stutter during the 10-minute
interview, she has found it has a positive effect. She
advises students to use their stammer as a pause in speech, instead
of ploughing through and stumbling. Hearers can acquire the
corresponding patience by keeping this opening line of Satchidanandan
in mind:

Stammer is no
handicap:

it is a mode of
speech.

Mathew
– Waller

Edmund
Waller (1606-1687)

You
may read a short biography of the poet and MP, Edmund Waller at his
wiki site:

He
was a Cavalier, not a Roundhead, was a piece of intelligence Talitha
provided. There's a statue to him outside the British Parliament.
His Poems were first published in 1645.

Waller
is thought to have refined the couplet form. Waller's lyrics were
once widely admired, but they have lost their shine, except a few
like the song, Go Lovely Rose. Mathew read this first; it is a
conversation with a rose, comparing its fate were it to bloom in an
arid region, to the lover who scorns his attention. Here is the image
of a rose blooming

In
deserts, where no men abide,

Thou
must have uncommended died

The
lines bring to mind Gray's famous Elegy written a century
later:

Full
many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And
waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Priya
who owns the café T-Pot clamoured for Mathew to read the poem: Of
Tea, Commended by Her Majesty.
The lines

To
the fair region where the sun doth rise,

Whose
rich productions we so justly prize.

refer
to China, not India as Joe thought. For tea which grew wild in China
and was a beverage already (chay) was brought to India as a
domesticated plant. It was suggested that Priya could frame and hang
the poem in her café.

“You
must remember that Britain had a difficult balance of payments
problem at the time. Tea, silks, and porcelain were valued imports
from China to Britain (indeed to Europe). And taxes on tea
constituted an important part of the revenue of the British Crown, 10
percent. How to pay for the imports? There was incredibly large
budget deficit. Tonnes of silver and gold had to be exported from
Britain to China. The Chinese did not want to buy anything from
Britain, because they were confident they could make any product from
Europe even better themselves.

It
was at this time Warren Hastings in India strategised with his
advisers how to fix Britain’s deficit: it would be by trading in
cotton, and vastly expanding the opium trade. It was a deliberate,
desperate and nefarious strategy. He sent ships up the Pearl River
with opium to penetrate the Chinese market.

Priya
mentioned a recent move by Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the Planning
Commission to elevate Tea to the status of the National Drink. That
will begin its slide from popularity, was Mathew's rejoinder. It
truly is a national drink, all the way from N to S and E to W. Even
in S India where coffee holds a special place, tea is grown and drunk
in even larger quantity. Indeed, explorers traveling to the North
Pole from Canada will find the last shop before hitting the Pole is a
tea room in the frozen north, owned by a Sri Lankan Tamil.

Joe
– Jonson

Ben Jonson (1572 – 1637)

Ben Jonson (BJ),
the Elizabethan poet, dramatist, and delightful wit of the age, who
knew Shakespeare well, is referred to in a recent biography as the
first literary celebrity and England's first lit critic. He was ten
years younger than Shakespeare and hailed from Scots roots. His
education, unlike Shakespeare's, was at a first-rate public school
and later he attended Cambridge. He was learned and scholarly, but
also an adventurer and pugnacious by nature. In 1616 he received a
pension of 100 marks (about £66) and became thereby England's first
poet laureate. He married a woman who did not seem to make a great
impression on him but yielded him children. In the age of the plague
they did not survive long. Here is a poem by BJ on his first son's
death. Intimate though it is, it conveys a universal grief.

Poem
1. On My First Son

Jonson
knew Shakespeare personally as he too was an actor, and at one point
he acted in the same company in which WS had equity (The Lord
Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men). It's a marvellous fact
that they acted in each other's plays. The publication of WS's
collected plays in the First Folio in 1623 was the effort of the
actors Heminge and Condell; it has a famous prefatory poem by BJ,
titled “To the memory of my beloved, the author, Master William
Shakespeare, and what he hath left us” This tribute represents the
first extended critical appraisal of Shakespeare’s genius.

Poem
2. To the memory of my beloved, the author, Master William
Shakespeare

In
a later essay on Shakespeare he said “I loved the man, and do
honour his memory (on this side idolatry) as much as any.” From
which Bernard Shaw coined the word bardolatry.

Like
WS, BJ wrote songs that have been set to music. Here is one which
lads have used in the refined task of paying compliments to maidens:

Poem
3. Song to Celia

Talitha
asked Joe to sing it, and in default she gave the readers her
rendition to great applause. Joe regrets he didn't have his iPod with
him to capture it for the record.

BJ
was a bibulous man who grew to an imposing weight of 280 pounds. He
dined once with his wine-merchant to whom he owed money. He promised
to forgive the poet his debt if he answered these four questions
immediately:

– What
God is best pleased with?– What the devil is best pleased
with?– What the world is best pleased with?– What he was
best pleased with?

Pat
came the answer: Poem
4. Reply to the Vinter

BJ
was buried in a narrow plot in Westminster Abbey perpendicularly,
head-first with a stone slab on which a lesser poet paid the workman
18 pence to have inscribed these words “O RARE BEN JONSON”

Talitha
& Priya
– Rich

Adrienne
Rich (1929 – 2012)

Ms.
Rich died recently on Mar 27. The notice of her death appeared in
many newspapers. Here is the New York Times report:

It
turned out that both Priya and Talitha had chosen the same poet, even
the same poems for this session. Perhaps, we should find a coordinated
way in future to avoid a clash of our reading selections.

Two
distinctive traits of Ms Rich were

(1)
she was quite political as a poet, participating in Vietnam War
protests, and writing anti-war poetry, and

(2)
she came out as a lesbian in 1976 after her husband, through whom she
had three sons, had committed suicide.

In
an unusual reversal she was a woman “writing about her envy of
women who didn’t
have children, speaking about her jealousy of her own children, and,
of course, her profound love for them.”

Talitha
hoped on her next visit to America to look up Ms. Rich who lived in
Baltimore, where Talitha's son is currently studying. Talitha
alluded to the views of Ms. Rich on a couple of important things:

1.
Do poets need to 'come out'? What are the connections between the
public
sphere in which men operate, and the private
sphere of women?

2.
The difference between 'comfortable'
poetry and 'wild'
poetry. Ms Rich inclined to the latter: “There's a lot of what I
would call comfortable poetry around. And I would have to say that
some of that comfortable poetry is being written by gay and lesbian
poets ... But then there is all this other stuff going on -- which is
wilder, which is bristling; it's juicier, it's everything that you
would want. And it's not comfortable. That's the kind of poetry that
interests me.” See an interview Ms. Rich gave on poetry, politics,
and personal revelation:

Joe
asked in the context of Ms. Rich what does it mean to say she was a
political poet? Talitha replied that it consisted in her taking
positions publicly on events and movements in society, such as Black
Power, lesbianism, the Vietnam War, and so on. In France such writers
would be called engagé.
Writing poetry about such things was not the practice in America at
the time (the sixties), although quite normal across the Atlantic.

Talitha
mentioned that Ms. Rich declined the National Medal for the Arts in
1997, saying the she could not accept such an award "while the
people at large are so dishonored" by racial and economic
injustice. She won the National Book Award for poetry in 1974 for
Diving
Into the Wreck
and a MacArthur "genius" grant in 1994.

Priya
referred to the Role of Poetry as enunciated by Adrienne Rich, who
contrasted the limitless corporate greed in evidence today with the
concerns of poetry which are: beauty and kinship.

The
first poem, Tonight
No Poetry Will Serve,
seemed to suggest a physical lesbian encounter of such intensity that
even poetry can't compete. But in a confused medley of fragments, the
poet ends with a challenge to the reader to construct a sentence
diagram to parse her ending (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_diagram
for sentence diagramming methods to create parse trees.)

Joe
won't try because mechanical parsing is of no avail if the sentence
itself makes no sense.

Talitha
alluded to the alliteration in the following lines:

taking
a long look

at
the new moon's eyelid

Poetry,
it's clear goes out the window faced with the intense experience
described. Did you see the 'supermoon' on May 5, asked KumKum out of the blue – a
question that may have only a tenuous relevance to the poem.

The
next poem, Diving
into the Wreck,
teems with detail about the experience of a diver. The suspense of
the poem keeps the readers on edge and Mathew pointed out how vividly
the poem describes the dive. Priya and Talitha shared the reading of
the text; Priya read up to you
breathe differently down here.
The lines

First
the air is blue and then

it
is bluer and then green and then

black
I am blacking out and yet

my
mask is powerful

it
pumps my blood with power

heightens
the sense of panic, but it is accompanied by beauty. KumKum sighed at
the end 'how nice' was the feeling left by the poem.

Priya
read Aunt
Jennifer's Tigers.
It is in the Plus 2 curriculum in India, but students don't
understand it and don't take to it, said Talitha. It's a dense poem.
It concerns an embroidered screen Aunt Jennifer made. Gopa saw the
importance of the line

They
do not fear the men

Aunt
Jennifer is not Adrienne Rich, Talitha said, when the question was
raised whether the aunt represents the poet. Jennifer is one of those
women who have had to submit to men in their lives. Adrienne
Rich on the other hand was arguing and talking since childhood. You
can from one point of view think the poet is erecting a monument to
Aunt Jennifer in this poem, for, after her death,

The
tigers in the panel that she made

Will
go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

These
lines reminded Joe of the lines from the
Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Keats describes the animation etched on the urn, now frozen into
permanence:

Fair
youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy
song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold
Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though
winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;

She
cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For
ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

An
unexplained comment from Mathew is noted, about Bangkok tigers being
sedated. I think the connection is that like the harmless tigers in
Aunt Jennifer's embroidery, the tigers in the Bangkok park that
wander among the people are sedated to the point of having all their
wildness extinguished.

Adrienne
Rich has dabbled in the ghazal
form too, in the volume
Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib.
She follows Ghalib's use of a minimum of five couplets, each couplet
being autonomous and independent of the others. The continuity and
unity flow from the associations and images playing back and forth
among the couplets in any single ghazal.
See http://www.newpoetspress.com/ghazal.html

Here
is Adrienne Rich's fourth ghazal
from the volume Ghazals:
Homage to Ghalib:

Did
you think I was talking about my life?

I
was trying to drive a tradition up against the wall.

The
field they burned over is greener than all the rest.

You
have to watch it, he said, the sparks can travel the roots.

Shot
back into this earth's atmosphere

our
children's children may photograph these stones.

In
the red wash of the darkroom, I see myself clearly;

when
the print is developed and handed about, the face is

nothing
to me.

For
us the work undoes itself over and over:

the
grass grows back, the dust collects, the scar breaks open.

Priya
quoted these lines of a ghazal
couplet that Rich wrote:

When
you read these lines think of me

And
what I did not write here.

KumKum
said this does not contain the sense of yearning for something that
the ghazal is famous for. Mathew agreed, and Sunil told about Agha
Shahid Ali attempting to make the form popular among American poets.
See

Mirza
Ghalib is celebrated as a writer of ghazals. He was constantly
writing letters to friends which contained many throw-away lines that
others could use. Here are two examples and the idea is to translate
and turn them into English couplets (rhymed AA), or quatrains (rhymed
ABAB using tetrameter or trimeter).

[Literally,
I want to write such stuff that whoever reads it should enjoy it]

Turn
this into a couplet in English.

Contributions
by Readers in response to the Ghalib Exercise:

(1)
Couplet

Talitha

The pen can
span the hundred miles that keep you far apart,

Though
voiceless, winging joyous union to the sundered heart

KumKum

When the pen
sends words across

A hundred mile,
without uttering.

The lonely
heart learns to be joyous

Despite the
chasm that's dividing.

Joe

Speak with the
tongue of the pen

From a hundred
miles away;

Through the
aching absence, yen

For the joy of
the meeting day!

Priya

Grieve not the
hundred miles,

That keep you
apart,

Speak up and
pen your voice,

And find the
miles dissolve.

(2)
One-liner

Talitha
– ('I
found his line most uninspiring and have done a creative translation
using his one-liner as a springboard')

This is my sole
desire - to strike a word of fire,

A line that
will inspire,

Delight your
eyes - and lift them higher.

KumKum

I endeavor to
pen only such thoughts, and hope,

The accidental
readers will delight in my scope.

Joe

Such things I
wish to write

That reading,
you'll delight.

Priya

My little wish
is this

To write such
words forever

That will light
up a heart

When read by
whomsoever.

The
Poems

KumKum
– AkhmatovaThe
first two are from her uncollected poems and fragments, composed
between 1904 –1917. They do not carry any titles.

1.

I
know how to love

I
know how to be submissive and tender.

I
know how to gaze into someone's eyes with a smile,

Alluring,
inviting and hesitant.

And
,y supplee figure is so light and slender,

And
the fragrance of curls is caressing.

Oh,
the one who is with me is troubled

And
enveloped in languor ....

I
know how to love. I am deceptively shy.

I
am so timidly tender and always silent,

Speaking
only with my eyes.

They
are clear and pure,

So
transparently radiant,

Offering
happiness.

Believe
me--- they will deceive,

Only
become more azure,

More
tender and bright,

Light-blue
gleaming fires.

And
on my lips, crimson bliss,

A
breast whiter than mountain snow,

My
voice -- the murmur of azure streams.

I
know how to love, My kiss awaits you.

2.

I
plucked lilies, lovely and fragrant

Modestly
closed, like a host of innocent maids:

From
their petals trembling with dew

I
drank the aroma, and happiness and calm.

And
my heart winced, as if in pain,

And
the pale flowers nodded their heads,

And
I dreamt once more of that far-off freedom,

Of
that land where I was with you.

3.
N.V.N.

All
year you've been inseparable from me,

And
as joyful and youthful as before!

Can
it really be that you're not exhausted

By
the troubled song of the slackened strings--

Which
before were taut, and rang out,

But
now only softly moan.

They
are tormented to no end

By
my dry and waxen hand ...

Truly
it takes so little to please

Him
who is tender and loves radiantly,

Whose
young brow is untouched by

Anger,
spite or jealousy.

Gentle,
gentle, he doesn't ask to be caressed,

Only
gazes at me

And
endures with a smile of bliss

The
frightful ravings of my semi-consciousness.

Spring
1915, Slepnyovo

(From
the book White
Flock.
)

Note:
N.V.N. is Nikolay Vladimirovich Nedobrovo (1882 – 1919), poet,
critic and close friend, about whose death of tuberculosis of the
kidneys she learned from Osip Mandeshtam when he visited her. (see
Anna
Akhmatova and Her Circle by
Konstantín Polívanov;
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=PZYXTrzUj3QC
)

Kavita
– Wordsworth

Daffodils

I wandered lonely
as a cloud

That
floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When
all at once I saw a crowd,

A
host, of golden daffodils;

Beside
the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering
and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous
as the stars that shine

And
twinkle on the milky way,

They
stretched in never-ending line

Along
the margin of a bay:

Ten
thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing
their heads in sprightly dance.

The
waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did
the sparkling waves in glee:

A
poet could not but be gay,

In
such a jocund company:

I
gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What
wealth the show to me had brought:

For
oft, when on my couch I lie

In
vacant or in pensive mood,

They
flash upon that inward eye

Which
is the bliss of solitude;

And
then my heart with pleasure fills,

And
dances with the daffodils.

The
Solitary Reaper

BEHOLD
her, single in the field,

Yon
solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping
and singing by herself;

Stop
here, or gently pass!

Alone
she cuts and binds the grain,

And
sings a melancholy strain;

O
listen! for the Vale profound

Is
overflowing with the sound.

No
Nightingale did ever chaunt

More
welcome notes to weary bands

Of
travellers in some shady haunt,

Among
Arabian sands:

A
voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

In
spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

Breaking
the silence of the seas

Among
the farthest Hebrides.

Will
no one tell me what she sings?—

Perhaps
the plaintive numbers flow

For
old, unhappy, far-off things,

And
battles long ago:

Or
is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of
to-day?

Some
natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That
has been, and may be again?

Whate'er
the theme, the Maiden sang

As
if her song could have no ending;

I
saw her singing at her work,

And
o'er the sickle bending;—

I
listen'd, motionless and still;

And,
as I mounted up the hill,

The
music in my heart I bore,

Long
after it was heard no more.

Gopa
– Bhatt

In
Search for My Tongue by Sujata BhattYou
ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my tongue.I ask you,
what would you doif you had two tongues in your mouth,and
lost the first one, the mother tongue,and could not really know
the other,the foreign tongue.You could not use them both
togethereven if you thought that way.And if you lived in a
place you had tospeak a foreign tongue,your mother tongue
would rot,rot and die in your mouthuntil you had to spit it
out.I thought I spit it outbut overnight while I dream,

(munay
hutoo kay aakhee jeebh aakhee bhasha)

(may thoonky nakhi
chay)

(parantoo
rattray svupnama mari bhasha pachi aavay chay)

(foolnee
jaim mari bhasha nmari jeebh)

(modhama kheelay
chay)

(fullnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh)

(modhama
pakay chay)

it
grows back, a stump of a shootgrows longer, grows moist, grows
strong veins,it ties the other tongue in knots,the bud opens,
the bud opens in my mouth,it pushes the other tongue
aside.Everytime I think I've forgotten,I think I've lost the
mother tongue,it blossoms out of my mouth.

Sunil
– SatchidanandanPoems
by K. Satchidanandan, translated from the Malayalam by the poet.